Travel Review: HotelCalculator.com

Hotel Calculatorcontacted me recently and said they would pay me handsomely to travel around the world and rate room service in every 5-star hotel they have listed. I respectfully declined and instead offered to check out, and review their hotel search engine and share with you what I think. While this is a sponsored post, you know that I will always give my objective option.

Up until this point I’ve booked all my hotel reservations through Hotels.com. They have a great inventory of accommodations and an impressive customer service team. When I started analyzing the HotelCalculator.com I was very pleased to see that Hotels.com is one of the 28 hotel reservations agencies that Hotel Calculator pulls information from.

SITE FUNCTIONALITY

Hotel Calculator is fast, user-friendly and free. For me, those are the 3 best attributes to any service providing website. You can search for hotels, hostels, B&Bs, apartments and even guesthouses. You can also narrow your search by price, neighborhood, number of stars, amenities, etc.

From there, Hotel Calculator displays available accommodations related to your search along with the website in which it pulled the information from (such as hotels.com, hotelclub.com, booking.com, etc). Once you select a location you are sent to begin the checkout process on corresponding agency.

I focused my destination searches on places in Colombia and Argentina and I was impressed with the majority of search results. Although they didn’t have accommodations for smaller towns like Tilcara, Argentina or Guatape, Colombia, they did offer an extensive inventory for major travel destinations, such as Medellin (77 results), Cartagena (48), Salta (78) and Mar Del Plata (93).

PRICING

The sites that Hotel Calculator compares gives them a very strong pricing system. I compared particular hotels listed on Hotel Calculator with other hotel reservation platforms and HC had the price edge on every one.

I even went down to the Art Hotel in El Poblado, Medellin to ask what their nightly rate was. I was given a quote for 1-night in a standard room for 2 people at $110 USD. On Hotel Calculator the total price was $86 USD.

The other thing I really liked about the comparison pricing at Hotel Calculator was that it gives you an exact price. Not like some other sites where you see ‘From $86 and up’ and then when you go to the actual site to book your reservation there is another $50 in ‘hotel insurance’ fees and taxes.

MOBILE APP:

Hotel Calculator also has an iPhone app that works really well if you’re on the road or away from your computer. It’s very similar to their actual website where you can search and sort accommodations with a variety of tools. You can also choose to view the hotel results on a map which is a cool feature and you can make your reservation directly from the iPhone.

OVERALL:

PROS:

Site Functionality: Easy to navigate and simple to checkout.

Saves Time & Money: I would be satisfied searching only Hotel Calculator only for price comparisons because of their extensive network. I don’t think you’ll find a better competitive price source.

CONS:

One feature that I really love about Hotels.com that Hotel Calculator does not have is the “Landmarks Proximity” search option where you can choose a hotel in regards to distance from a specific landmark or point of interest. (note: They do show ‘Distances’ on the General Information section of some of hotel search results pages and show maps of location).

Needs more hotel customer reviews (maybe they could pull something from Trip Advisor).